The Biden administration announced Friday (16) that it will provide $1.7 billion in funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments to establish a national network to identify and track mutated viruses, which have caused a surge in the number of infections in the United States.
Rochelle Walensk, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Friday that the program is being funded from the previously approved $1.9 trillion bailout ($1.7 billion) to combat mutant viruses.
The U.S. will allocate $1 billion to directly expand genome sequencing to detect confirmed mutant viruses, provide about $400 million to launch six genomic epidemiology centers of excellence to study how to stop the spread of mutant viruses, and provide $300 million to establish a national bioinformatics data system for viral genetic analysis.
Carole Johnson, White House coordinator for new crown testing, mentioned, “This will help ensure that states and the CDC have the support they need to defend against dangerous variant viruses and slow the rate of infection in the United States.”
The Biden administration’s move comes as the British variant of the virus, known as New Coronavirus variant B.1.1.7, has ravaged the United States and is now the leading cause of infection in the country, hitting Michigan as the primary cause of more than 50 percent of confirmed infections in the state.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the number of confirmed cases has surpassed 139 million worldwide and the number of deaths exceeded 2.99 million, with more than 31.56 million confirmed cases and more than 566,000 deaths in the United States.
As of press time, the U.S. has recorded an average of nearly 70,000 new diagnoses per day over the past week, up from a recent low of 53,000 in mid-March, with hospitalization rates on the rise and deaths up for the third consecutive day.
Although the number of new diagnoses is well below the winter peak of nearly 250,000 per day, the daily surge of new diagnoses in the U.S. is higher than last summer’s peak.
Esther Krofah, executive director of the Milken Institute’s FasterCures Center, said a massive expansion of genomic surveillance in the U.S. is needed in order to make it possible for the U.S. (even) to return to normal by fall.
Recent Comments